Truck Left!

Well, to be a bit more accurate — at the cost of some dramatic effect — a truck clipped me.

I was cycling uphill along a winding road near Pt. Reyes when all of a sudden: BANG! — there was this loud noise, which I soon realized was from the impact of a speeding truck slamming into my left elbow and the left edge of my handlebars. The truck — a dirty white pickup — was going really fast (at least, compared to me — so admittedly, that might not be incredibly fast), and by the time I’d absorbed what had just happened, it was already way ahead of me.

I didn’t fall off my bike; I didn’t even stop pedaling — though I imagine that if the truck had just swerved a smidge more into me, things might have ended unhappily. It turns out that my elbow had flattened the truck’s passenger-side rearview mirror. This leads me to think — and I’m not normally a boastful man, at least about my joints — that I have really strong elbows! Maybe my ancestors, when pondering the futility of their lives, assumed a particular position — elbows on desk, say — that, over the generations, led to an unheard-of toughness. In any case, I can assure you that I feel totally fine! My elbow has a little bruise, but it doesn’t hurt at all. Although, as they say, you should see the other guy!

I caught up with that other guy — the truck’s driver — eventually. At first, after he’d hit me (and let me mention that I wasn’t riding in the middle of the road or anything: I was as far to the right as I could go without falling off) and I’d watched his truck zoom away without stopping, I was pissed. You know, New York-style pissed! As I continued pedaling, as fast as I could go, I gestured after him with my hand, as if to say, Are you effin’ kidding me? I tried to make out the license plate, but couldn’t. By the time the truck disappeared around a curve, I assumed that I’d never see it again.

But then it stopped, at a turnout — and right away my anger at this apparent clip-and-run evaporated. When I finally pulled up alongside the truck, and the guy rolled down his window, I found that I couldn’t be upset at all. Because here was a big man with a little chihuahua on his lap. I mean a really big (and bald) man, with this little tiny scared-looking chihuahua! The man looked scared, too. He kept asking me, again and again, “Are you okay? Are you sure you’re okay?” And instead of saying something snippy (like “No thanks to you, Mr. Erratic Truck Driver!”), all I could do was emit the little babyish sounds that I tend to make whenever I encounter cute little doggies (and even big doggies): “Oh, look at you! Look how sweet you are — yesh you are!” Etc.

Finally, the driver — having been unable to get me to say that I’d been hurt in any way (I hadn’t) — drove off. And I had a fairly impressive story to tell my Team In Training teammates at the next SAG stop.

SAG stops are cool. I believe the term is an acronym for Support And Gear — but in my experience with TNT they tend to be food-and-drink stations, usually run by volunteers. (Often there are also Port-O-Sans.) All SAG stops are magical and lovely things, but the best I’ve experienced have been set up by Jim Fenolio, whose daughter Jennifer was one of my teammates last season. I believe Jim was going through (successful) treatment for cancer as we trained last year. Here are some of the things that I remember being available to us weary riders back at my first-ever Jim Fenolio SAG Extravaganza:

Numerous, carefully sliced peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich wedges, with many different varieties of preserves (e.g., rose-petal-and-guava), which were labeled so you knew what you were getting.

Peet’s coffee.

Hot chocolate.

Teas, herbal and caffeinated.

Many types of pretzels and chips.

Eggs prepared in a number of ways.

Water.

Sea salt.

Steaming, hearty soup.

Manna from Heaven (or maybe Dublin).

AC/DC blaring from a boombox.

I’m sure I’m leaving out a ton of stuff — but you get the idea: It was the kind of SAG stop that makes you think it would be pretty cool if you could just live at a SAG stop.

Well, this time, among Jim’s offerings (and don’t get me started on the delicious meatballs!) were these rice-patty things that contained crab meat and a type of mushroom whose name I don’t recall but I know is popular among connoisseurs. Jim explained to me that at one of his SAG stops on an earlier ride (one that, tragically, I had missed, as I had a gig in Florida that weekend), he had prepared a similar dish, but with another kind of fish (halibut, maybe?) — and that someone had mentioned to him that, well, it might be even better with crab meat.

Who the hell requests fancier ingredients at a SAG stop? It put me in mind of these two little girls who happened to be playing “ice-cream truck” at the “tot lot” in Berkeley that I used to take my son to, years ago. One of them said something like, “Welcome, customer! What would you like?” and the other one said, totally seriously, something like, “Um, I’d like a scoop of cappuccino-mint gelato and also a lychee-lemongrass sorbet, if you would.” Perhaps we have reached a point — and I am speaking here specifically of Bay Area bourgeois culture — where there are just too many choices.

In any case, Jim’s food (and the food of all the other SAG volunteers) was yummy.

Overall, the ride — nearly 61 miles in length, and 4,329 feet in elevation (but who’s counting?) — was quite challenging. But I made it to the end (at Stafford Lake, in Novato) and was able to return home in triumph and experience the hot bath I’d been fantasizing about for lo, those many miles. I’ll admit that — especially when the road got particularly narrow, and the winds became especially gusty — I sometimes got a bit jittery when one of my teammates called out “Car back!” (or, more bracingly, “Truck back!”), or when some skinny hotshot cyclist (not with TNT) came brushing past me without first calling out a helpful “Bike left!” But that dirty white pickup truck hadn’t killed me, so it must have made me stronger. Who knows? Maybe, even now, at truck stops throughout Marin County, a legend is spreading — about a mysterious, indestructible cyclist with Elbows of Steel. Mark me well, truckers of Marin: I will be back. So drive carefully, keep your chihuahuas close, and keep your passenger-side rearview mirrors even closer.

I am training with the Leukeumia & Lymphoma Society’s Team In Training (TNT) to cycle the Solvang Century on March 9 — both to try to shrink my pendulous tummy and (more important) to raise money to fight cancer. You can contribute to my ride by clicking here. (As of this writing, I am 42 percent of the way toward my goal.)

Below are maps of my two most recent rides. If you click on them, many additional details will be revealed to you.